There's really not much to say about Safe House. The movie delivers on good action sequences but utterly fails to give any impression of uniqueness or originality. As a friend who saw the movie with me put it, it feels like I've seen this exact same story before.
The acting, particularly from Denzel Washington, is solid and the visual aspects are well executed. The greatest problem with the film is not in the manner in which the story is portrayed, which is quite good, but the unoriginal, predictable storyline itself. The ending felt extremely unsatisfying as, after an extremely predictable flow of events up until the final few minutes, the film tries to throw a major curve-ball but ends up just seeming awkward. It's almost like they realized at the last minute that the movie was too predictable and tried to mix things up.
In addition, there seemed to be a few issues with editing such as the abnormally loud sound of gunshots which overwhelmed/greatly exceeded the volume of other sound effects. At some points in the movie it felt/sounded more like a shooting range than a movie theater.
Further, the action scenes were executed extremely rapidly to the point it seemed just like a bunch of blurs flashing around on the screen, especially during driving/car-chase scenes. The strange cinematography, with the camera rapidly changing position and focus, further contributed to this blurring effect. It was extremely difficult to determine what was going on at multiple points in the movie.
If I was asked to describe/rate this movie in one word, I would have to say mediocre. There is nothing great about but also nothing terrible about it. Personally, I don't feel it is worth the 10+ dollar cost of movie admission - just wait for it to come out on television. That said, it is not the worst possible choice if you want to get out to the theater.
Safe House gets 6/10.
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